Rock 'n' Roll: A New Play

by Tom Stoppard

Overview

“One of the great political plays in the English language.”—Sunday Times (UK)

It is 1968, and the world is ablaze with rebellion. Clutching his prized collection of rock albums, Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland of Czechoslovakia just as Soviet tanks roll into Prague. When security forces tighten their grip on artistic expression, Jan is inexorably drawn toward a dangerous act of dissent. Back in England, Jan’s volcanic mentor Max, a communist Marxist, faces a crisis of his own as his cancer-stricken wife Eleanor, and then his free-spirited daughter Esme, witness the breakdown of his ideals. Winner of the Evening Standard’s Best Play Award, Rock ‘n’ Roll moves between Cambridge and Prague, where lives spin and intersect with history until an unexpected reunion draws together what was worth the fight: the possibility of freedom and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802160799
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	630,392
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 and moved to England with his family in 1946. Catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967, he has become recognized as a contemporary comic master, the brilliantly acclaimed author of The Real Inspector Hound, Enter a Free Man, Albert's Bridge, After Magritte, Travesties, Dirty Linen, Jumpers, New-Found-Land, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Artist Descending a Staircase, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage), and Rock 'n' Roll. He has also written a number of screenplays, including The Romantic Englishwoman, Despair, and Brazil.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Rock 'n' Roll:

“So flush with feeling that it never seems to stop trembling . . . Stoppard locates the very rhythm of life . . . [His] most emotionally generous play.”—New York Times

“[An] extraordinary, epic drama of politics, persecution, and protest.”—Evening Standard

“Astonishing . . . There is an energy, rawness, and passion here one doesn’t associate with the elegant and witty Stoppard, passages of unbuttoned emotion that go straight to the heart . . . This new piece smells, well, of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”—Daily Telegraph

“Astonishing . . . Touches on so many themes, registers its lament at the erosion of freedom in our society and yet leaves you cheered by its wit, buoyancy and belief in the human spirit.”—The Guardian

From the Publisher